Cambridge University Press eBooks

Dynamics of the condensate

C. J. Pethick, H. Smith

Published Sep 11, 2008• 0 citations

Abstract

The time-dependent behaviour of Bose–Einstein condensed clouds, such as collective modes and the expansion of a cloud when released from a trap, is an important source of information about the physical nature of the condensate. In addition, the spectrum of elementary excitations of the condensate is an essential ingredient in calculations of thermodynamic properties. In this chapter we treat the dynamics of a condensate at zero temperature starting from a time-dependent generalization of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation used in Chapter 6 to describe static properties. From this equation one may derive equations very similar to those of classical hydrodynamics, which we shall use to calculate properties of collective modes. We begin in Sec. 7.1 by describing the time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equation and deriving the hydrodynamic equations, which we then use to determine the excitation spectrum of a homogeneous Bose gas (Sec. 7.2). Subsequently, we consider modes in trapped clouds (Sec. 7.3) within the hydrodynamic approach, and also describe the method of collective coordinates and the related variational method. In Sec. 7.4 we consider surface modes of oscillation, which resemble gravity waves on a liquid surface. The variational approach is used in Sec. 7.5 to treat the free expansion of a condensate upon release from a trap. Finally, in Sec. 7.6 we discuss solitons, which are exact one-dimensional non-linear solutions of the time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equation.

DOI: 10.1017/cbo9780511802850.008

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